From the moment Anna Nolan finished second in the original Big Brother, in 2000, Irish people have seemed destined to occupy a pivotal place in British reality television. That continues all the way through to 2021, with Siobhán McSweeney, who plays Sr Michael in Derry Girls, the charming new host of Channel 4's Great Pottery Throw Down and Angela Scanlon fronting the upcoming Your Garden Made Perfect, on the BBC.
As contestants, Irish people north and south continue to likewise call attention to themselves in this world of against-the-clock challenges and tear-jerking eliminations. We were reminded of that as the 32 year-old Belfast designer Paul Moneypenny put in an eyebrow-raising performance in an otherwise ho-hum opening instalment of Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr (BBC Two, Tuesday).
For Irish viewers Paul Moneypenny is the stand-out participant, less for the design instincts that lead him to inflict head-to-toe wallpaper on a show-house livingroom than for his towering chutzpah
With Carr taking over from Fearne Cotton as presenter, Interior Design Masters is watchable rather than earth-shattering. That’s partly because it is so formulaic. A task is set. The contestants inevitably make a mess of it. Someone is sent on their way. Weeping and wailing ensue. So it goes here, with bonus soft furnishings. It’s eminently acceptable comfort viewing but nothing more.
Still, for Irish viewers Moneypenny is the immediate stand-out participant. That has less to do with the design instincts that lead him to inflict head-to-toe wallpaper on a show-house livingroom than it does with his towering chutzpah. His cheekiness is on proud display as he tries to wow guest judge Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen by causally placing a framed photograph of them taking a selfie together. Llewelyn-Bowen laughs.
“I can’t believe someone would do that,” adds the other judge, Michelle Ogundehin. She is Not Impressed. But Moneypenny survives to wallpaper another day, as set-designer Mona is dismissed for neglecting to put curtains in her bedroom makeover.
Carr is bubbly and brimming with bonhomie, and you can see why the BBC hired him (although he is overshadowed by the mildly terrifying Ogundehin). That said, Irish viewers will immediately clock that this three-star show would be effortlessly bumped up to the full five with a bonus infusion of… Dermot Bannon.
This is the sort of thing the marquess of minimalism was born to present – you constantly expect him to stick his head around the corner and complain about the lack of floor-to-ceiling glass. His mix of unstinting optimism and obsession with windows, windows everywhere is exactly what the series requires.
Still, let’s not judge Carr too harshly for failing to blend it like Bannon. He does his best with terribly run-of-the-mill ingredients. And as a placeholder until the next season of Bake Off or Love Island – or Bake Off on Love Island, which Channel 4 would probably make if it could get away with it – Interior Design Masters is stonkingly adequate.
